Glencoe Making A Better Wright Bridge

As originally designed, a bridge by architect Frank Lloyd Wright was to function as a grand approach to one of his houses in the Ravine Bluffs section of northeast Glencoe.

Instead, the Booth house, designed for Wright`s lawyer, was eventually built farther from the ravine and the bridge became a Wright structure with its own distinction. It was the only bridge designed by the world-renowned Chicago architect that was ever built.

The long horizontal lines, ornamental flower urns and light fixtures on both ends of the bridge make it unmistakably Wright. A sitting area, where pedestrians can pause and enjoy the scenery of the ravine below, is built into one wall along the walkway.

But the bridge wasn`t sound. When the village decided to have it torn apart and rebuilt last fall, workmen discovered that the concrete crumbled like a cookie. There wasn`t much steel reinforcement. Road salt over the years leached out the cement from the concrete. One workman said he picked apart large sections of the bridge with his hands.

More steel will be placed in the concrete this time as the Sylvan Road bridge rises again, from the bottom of the ravine on up, and becomes one of the few Wright structures ever reconstructed.

``The new bridge will be the same design and same size as before,`` said Carolyn Haas of Glencoe, who is seeing years of effort to restore the bridge come true. ``Everything had to be the same to keep the bridge on the National Register (of Historic Places). The only difference will be that there will be a little better material in the bridge.``

Haas, an author of children`s books, lives on Sylvan Road near the bridge. Reconstruction of the bridge culminates years of lobbying by Haas and other neighbors, wrangling, government red tape and indecision about what to do about the bridge, which was built in 1915.

The bridge was closed to vehicle and pedestrian traffic in 1977 after part of its deck fell into the ravine. A year later it was placed on the National Register but barricades prevented people from getting close.

``The thing was in such bad shape that it had to be replaced,`` said Carl Peter, director of public works for Glencoe. The village considered replacing the structure with a standard girder bridge or putting in a culvert and filling in the ravine. Water flows through the dry canyon only during a good rain or spring thaw.

Those would have been cheaper alternatives.

But many villagers, descendants of Wright and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation rallied to save the bridge. About $36,000 in donations have been raised to save it, roughly $3,000 short of what will be needed.

There were no original plans available. Peter said engineers were forced to take hand measurements of the old bridge and use pictures to develop a new set of plans.

The project also got bottled up in government regulations for state and federal funding. The bridge will not be wide enough for two-way traffic, under federal rules, so it will have to be one-way.

Peter said there may be some dispute in the neighborhood about which way the bridge traffic should flow.

Widening the bridge for two-way traffic would have destroyed its authenticity and threatened its status on the National Register.

Glencoe Village Board members approved the project last fall, and demolition of the old bridge started in November. Overall costs, including construction and engineering, will be $393,100, with 80 percent coming from state and federal bridge funds, 10 percent from the village and 10 percent from private donations.

Glencoe officials were reluctant to pay more to replace a bridge that doesn`t have as much functional need as it has historic and esthetic significance. Sylvan Road is not heavily traveled, and neighbors have managed without the bridge for more than seven years because there is access to the area through another route.